Little Green Tush!

I switched to cloth diapers!!!!! And I am proud of myself!!!!!!

Every morning when I would take out the trash it would pain me to see the amount of waste that I was adding to the already polluted environment. I considered switching to cloth diapers a multiple times. But the thought of additional hassle of cleaning the diapers, leaky pants, increased frequency of diaper changing, possible diaper rash and the extra capital expenditure (each diaper can cost from INR 800 - INR 1500) was enough to dissuade me.

But one day I was reading an article on carcinogens like Dioxin present in sanitary pads, tampon and diapers. Yes even DIAPERS. That was the day I decided that I will do what it takes to reduce my child's exposure to harmful chemicals such as these, to as much as possible.

Apart from being safe for the baby, cloth diapers are easy on the pocket if used for over a year. They start paying for themselves after 7-8 months. (Cost analysis depends on your diaper usage, and may vary from family to family)

The environmental trail of disposables is alarming. It takes 236 ml of crude oil to create the plastic that goes into a single disposable diaper. Parents who put their baby in disposable diapers until two would run through 5,000 disposable diapers; 20 trees will be cut and 1,180 litres of crude oil used to make these 5,000 diapers. (source)

But switching to reusable diapers is not enough to reduce the ecological footprint. One must also focus on reducing the water that is needed to wash the diapers. It take 40 gallons of water to do 1 cycle in a typical top load washer. And the detergents used in a washing machine contain many environmentally hazardous chemicals.

We used a semi automatic washer earlier and plan on going back to it. These machines use less water than fully automatic ones and you can control the wash more easily. I also use an environmentally friendly detergent. I promise to put up a tutorial on that too.

Go Green!

Love,
Z

PS: I will do a review of the 3 different brands I am using shortly.

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